"It can't be," moaned Cynthia, "it can't be! I won't — I won't, I don't care what he does! But if only we could warn Allan — that is all that matters now — "
Allan Winchester shut the machine off. He had had his warning and there was no time to spare. His own fate and that of Cynthia's hung in the balance. All was lost unless he acted quickly.
He cast anxious eyes about him. He knew already that the ranks of his outer guards were thinning, for many of them had been marked for the purge. It took but the work of a moment to order the inner sentries to reinforce the recently depleted outer guards.
In a few seconds Winchester was free from the supervision that necessarily accompanies a man of great rank. The men who watched over his inner office were on their way to cubicles down corridors many hundreds of feet away.
He ran into the great file room where the basic records of millions of men were kept. For once he was thankful for the mysterious way in which the data for them had been submitted. Those damning reports had come in via television and were recorded as they came. Their source was lost. They could not be reconstructed except from the memories of men, most of whom were now dead or in the act of dying.
If the photo-recorded files were destroyed, the work of half a century of AFPA activity would be lost. No one could know what any number signified, nor the detailed record of any man.
Winchester surveyed swiftly the precautions previously made to preserve the priceless records. He also noted their inflammable nature, engraved as they were on reels of magnesium wire. He had only to seize a wrench and wreck beyond repair the valves leading to the sprinkler system.
Then he built a fire and shut the steel doors, to which only he and the now defunct Number Two had keys. In a few minutes the central files would be an inferno of flames, and the ashes would yield nothing.
All the carefully gleaned confidential information as to each citizen in the System would go up in smoke. Even the identity of the numbered slaves and convicts would be lost. No one could know who was in for what, or for how long.
Winchester hastily stripped. He shifted to one of the many disguises available — that of a common workman of Cosmopolis. Then he lifted his transmitter and called Number Fourteen down the corridor.
"Number One speaking," he said, in as cold and casual a voice as he could muster. "I have just been interviewing a most valuable witness and have let him go, thinking he was immune from arrest. He is tall and dressed in brown, and is walking down 'D' passage. He is a dangerous man, but I want him kept for further questioning.
"Grab him and send him at once to the Primary Barracks, but take care not to harm him in any way. His record will follow."
"I understand," said the faithful Number Fourteen.
Winchester hung up and glanced down at his brown garments. A distinct change, these poor clothes, from his robes of authority. He took one backward glance at the door to the file room, which was already reddening and beginning to bulge.
He had taken the precaution to sever the wires to the general alarm system, but a fire of that heat could not be concealed long. Within a few minutes the castle would be swarming with fire-fighters. He must be clear of the building before then.
Winchester crawled under his desk and raised a hidden hatch. In another moment he was sliding down the spiral way, until he came up against a door four floors below. By the use of special keys and an intricate knowledge of the place, he soon was out in an empty corridor and hurrying along it. He dreaded the details of his capture, but it was a thing that had to be.
It was not long in coming. He rounded another corner and then heard the harsh order.
"Halt!"
He quickened his stride, only to be confronted by another of the fast-thinning guards. There was a spurt of light, and Winchester found himself writhing on the floor, paralyzed and in agony. He looked at the man who had brought him down. It was Severs, one of the men on his list for destruction. Apparently they had not gotten to him yet.
Other soldiers rushed up, and Winchester was seized and hurried along toward the exit. He saw only, as he left, that two of the newly arrived guards had pulled Severs to one side.
"Good work, buddy," he thought he heard one of them say. "Step this way, will you? The boss wants to see you."
At least the AFPA purge of its most effective agents was being carried out, with all the thoroughness and fidelity to orders for which that body was notorious.
It was, thought Winchester, a type of murderous efficiency which successfully destroyed itself.
His entry into the disciplinary barracks was inconspicuous enough. His two captors simply turned him over to the gate guard. They noted his serial number and the red star emblazoned on his back. Then they shot him on into the herd of prisoners.
Winchester lost no time in seeking out his old friend Heim. He was somewhere there, he knew, for he himself had committed him. He had ransacked the Heim file and examined the man's record from childhood on. The fellow was reliable. He was a true patriot and idealist, brave to the point of recklessness, and utterly dependable.
It took Winchester hours, among those cluttered thousands, but at last he came upon the man, seated in the midst of a group of other red star convicts.
"As I live and breathe!" ejaculated Heim. "My old sidekick — Rip Van Winkle! I thought they had done you in."
"Not me," grinned Winchester, and he squatted beside them. "Not yet."
"S-sh-h," he warned a moment later. "I've got to talk with you. Big things are coming up."
"You're telling me?" said Heim, with a hard laugh. "A round-up like this isn't done for nothing. Look! They've got every one of us — all the men that I know, and hundreds more I never heard about. But so far as I know, not a stool pigeon in the lot. Somehow, after you've been a con awhile, you learn to smell 'em out."
"Right," said Winchester. "Every stool pigeon died, not an hour ago. I know. I had the list, and I ordered their execution."
Heim never batted an eyelash.
"Poor kid," he said commiseratingly, looking sharply at his old friend. "So stir's got you at last, too? I thought you could take it."
"I could. I did," said Winchester grimly. "And I'm not nuts. Listen!"
For an hour he talked into the other man's ear. Now he need not fear lip-reading or eavesdropping stool pigeons about, nor did he care a hang about the concealed telemicrophones and scanners adroitly placed about the walls. Their leads were blind now. Their impressions would be carried only to burned and charred instruments, in the ruins of what had been the central files. The precautions he had taken had been thorough.
"You!" exclaimed Heim, drawing back in the traditional fear born of years of dealing with masked agents.
"Yes, I!" Winchester was vehement. "I was the AFPA chief. I ordered these things. Given another three days, we would have had the world in our hands, to take as we liked. I would have moved the remnants of the AFPA from here and substituted puppet guards.
"We could have had access to the vast stores of weapons in the prison arsenal. But I was not allowed to finish the job. Lohan beat me to the punch."
"Then we're sunk," said Heim desperately, and with a touch of reproach. "What if you did have thousands of guards and agents and spies killed? They will find others. You have imprisoned us all and disabled our brains. There is no one left outside to help, or care.
"They will kill us off by degrees — work, work, work, poor food, the lash, torture. It would have been better if you had never come."
"No," Winchester said resolutely. "All is not lost. We are stronger than ever. We are here — tens of thousands of us — with but one thought and one idea — freedom! There is not